Monday, May 30, 2011

It's Dollar Dodger Dog Day at Dodger Stadium, and if that's not amazing enough, how about the Dodgers' surprising shocking series win over the second-place Marlins? Today the once-hot Rockies come into town, having been cooled off to under .500 by a series loss to the Cardinals. Do the Dodgers have a little momentum, or is this just an anomaly in a season of failure? Time to find out.

Yeah I thought it was funny, too. Vin seemed to have so much fun telling it. And it involved Durocher, and it took place at the Coliseum. Just a lot of neat history there. I had to look up the umpire's name to make sure I had it right.

How many people really travel far and wide, though, on MD weekend? Mostly people just go visit friends and family and grill out and shit. Generally, a telly with an important sports game would be cause to gather round and therefore generate ratings.

This seems like another 1956 understanding of social habits that doesn't have any remote modern context. thanks, Nielsen!

"Most of the young players who attended it would never play college football, but a few were top prospects whom Ohio State was recruiting. At the end of camp, attendees bought tickets to a raffle with prizes such as cleats and a jersey. According to his fellow assistant, Tressel rigged the raffle so that the elite prospects won -- a potential violation of NCAA rules. Says the former colleague, who asked not to be identified because he still has ties to the Ohio State community, "In the morning he would read the Bible with another coach. Then, in the afternoon, he would go out and cheat kids who had probably saved up money from mowing lawns to buy those raffle tickets. That's Jim Tressel."

"The great baseball portraitist Roger Kahn, whose writing about the Dodger glory days in the '50s has made him an unofficial team historian, once said that, 'In a perfect world, the Dodgers would've stayed in Brooklyn and Los Angeles would have gotten the Mets.' "